From the budget presentation, I'm going to pull out some sentences that registered with me.

The budget advances technologies to carry out the first-ever mission to identify, capture and redirect an asteroid, meeting the President’s challenge to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025.

If you lived through nineties, you may remember the summer of the asteroid hitting . . . the movies. We had dueling films: "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact." In each, an asteroid threatens the hit the US -- in the first one, it's re-directed. In the second, it hits. Of the films, I like the second better. Tea Leoni actually registers as a real person -- a rare thing in a disaster movie -- and Vanessa Redgrave gets some nice scenes as Tae's mother. Morgan Freeman's good as the president and mini-Helen Hunt (Leelee Sobieski) is also very good. "Armageddon"? Boring as hell after Bruce Willis finishes chasing underwear clad Ben Affleck around an oil rig. The only other scenes that worked were the ones with Liv Tyler.

Recently, there was an asteroid that came very close to the earth. So this does make sense in terms of spending on it.

To protect our planet, advance exploration capabilities and technologies for human space flight, and learn how to best utilize space resources, the FY14 budget aligns relevant portions of NASA’s science, space technology, and human exploration capabilities to meet the President’s challenge to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s.

.

That sort of goes with the other one. You know I'm a Curiousity fan so this is the other point that stood out to me:

Following Curiosity’s daring landing on Mars, provides for a new Mars rover mission to launch in 2020, continued operations of rovers and orbiters already at Mars, and launch of MAVEN in November to study the Martian atmosphere.

This is science. Not the nonsense Barack tried to pass off here (see Ruth here and here).

Wednesday, April 10, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, 12 (out of 18)
provinces get ready for elections, Iraqi media complains that candidates
don't want to deal with issues, western media grabs whatever narrative
Nouri feeds them, crimes against women continue in Iraq, western media
refuses to seriously address these crimes, the State Dept issues a
statement on antiquities, and more.

Starting with politics. First, Michele Kort (Ms. magazine's blog) notes
British MP Glenda Jackson's speech today (link is text and video --
including a video of the speech and a video of Women in Love -- a film
for which Glenda won one of her two Best Actress Academy Awards):

When I made my maiden speech in this chamber a little over two
decades ago …. Thatcherism was still wreaking, as it had wreaked for the
previous decade, the most heinous social, economic and spiritual upon
this country, upon my constituency and my constituents. …Our local hospitals were running on empty … I tremble to think what
the death rate for pensioners would have been this winter if that
version of Thatcherism had been fully up and running this year. ….The plaster on our classroom walls were kept in place by pupils’
artwork and miles and miles of Sellotape …. Our school libraries were
dominated by empty shelves ….But by far, by far, the most dramatic and heinous demonstration of
Thatcherism … [was that] every single shop doorway, every single night,
became the bedroom, the living room, the bathroom of the homeless. …

Still on politics but moving to the US Senate, Senator Patty Murray is
the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, prior to January, she was the
Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. Her office issued the
following statement today:

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Chairman of
the Senate Budget Committee and former Chairman of the Senate Veterans’
Affairs Committee, issued the following statement on the President’s
Fiscal Year 2014, and Fiscal Year 2015 advance appropriation, budget
request for the Department of Veterans Affairs. “The budget request President Obama unveiled today provides
reassurance for our veterans in an extremely difficult fiscal climate.
It represents a more than 4% increase in discretionary spending over the
VA budget request last year and it provides critical help in the areas
of mental health care, veterans unemployment, and female veterans’
health care. With a major influx of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan
seeking care at the VA, there is no question that the investments this
budget makes are sorely needed. “I was glad to see the President’s budget request mirrors many of the
same protections for our veterans that were included in the
Senate-passed budget last month. However, I will continue to work with
the VA on the few areas of concern I have in this budget, including
ending the shameful and unnecessary backlog of disability claims within
the system. We must support our nation’s heroes not only with the
benefits and care they deserve, but also with doing so in an efficient
and timely manner.” ###

There should be more on the topic above in tomorrow's snapshot when we
cover a hearing on the topic. Today, I attended a House Subcomittee
hearing we may try to work in tomorrow. At the request of a female
Iraqi community member in Ramadi, we are focusing a good portion of this
snapshot on crimes against women, sexism and the sexism of the western
media.

Before we get there, still on elections, we move over to Iraq which is
gearing up for elections -- or that's what the press insists. Only 12
of Iraq's 18 provinces are scheduled to vote April 20th in provincial
elections.

Barzani is the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the
semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq. Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Dohok
Provinces make up the KRG. That takes us from 12 to 15. The other
three provinces?

There's Kirkuk.

Kirkuk is disputed. Baghdad and Erbil both claim the oil-rich
province. Chris Hill, failed US Ambassador to Iraq, infamously
dismissed Kirkuk as an issue when appearing at his Senate confirmation
hearing (see the March 25, 2009 snapshot and the March 26th one). It's not 'a simple land dispute.' A simple land dispute can be settled.

The Iraqi Constitution's Article 140 provided for the disputed regions.
It said that the prime minister would implement a census and hold a
referendum and that would determine the fate. Nouri is aware of that
because he did participate in the writing of the Constitution. He
becomes prime minister in the spring of 2006. The Constitution dictates
that Article 140 be implemented by the end of 2007. That was years
ago. It's never been implemented. Nouri has failed to follow the
Constitution. And the result is that all this time later Kirkuk not
only still remains in dispute, it also can't participate in provincial
elections.

That takes us from 15 to 16 which still leaves 2 provinces not voting.
The other two? Nouri has declared that Sunni strongholds Anbar Province
and Nineveh Province will not vote. He's declared them to violent, too
prone to fraud, too this, too that. Though the Electoral Commission is
supposed to be independent and he doesn't sit on it, though the United
Nations has said that the two provinces need to be included in the vote,
Nouri says they won't vote.

As disturbing as that is, as huge an overstep as that is, what's even
more alarming is how the western press whores for Nouri. Alarming but
not surprising. March 8, 2010,
we witnessed Quil Lawrence whoring for Nouri on NPR -- declaring Nouri
got the most votes -- before even a third of the votes had been counted
-- and, oh, by the way, Nouri's political slate State of Law didn't get
the most votes, Iraqiya did. But whoring is really all the press is
good for.

Which is why they're running with the script he's supplying. It's not reality but reality's never been a concern for the press.

The script Nouri's supplying is that the results of April 20th will
demonstrate how popular he is. Nouri will not win in the KRG. That's
three provinces. Kirkuk's not voting. That's four. And the two
provinces where Nouri is outright loathed? He wouldn't carry Anbar or
Nineveh.

Is Iraq made up of 18 provinces or not? If it is, you can't judge
popularity when you rig who gets to vote. In addition, provincial
elections can indicate national trends, they do not, however, reflect
upon Nouri or anyone else who might be prime minister. They're the
equivalent, in the US, of election governors. Barack Obama's popularity
is not determined by who wins the governorship in Alaska or Alabama.
States are concerned with their own series of issues just as, in Iraq,
provinces are concerned with their own issues.

Nouri tried to film this script in 2009 and the press was happy to
greenlight it. They ran with the nonsense -- all of them including the
New York Times -- that it proved how Nouri was popular. Yet the next
year, as the same press was debating just how big of a win Nouri would
have in the 2010 elections, Nouri didn't win. His State of Law came in
second.

It's amazing how damn lazy what passes for the western press is. They
can't think for themselves which is why they can't carry out the press
corp role which is supposed to be skepticism. They can't think for
themselves so they swallow and spit back out any 'theme' someone feeds
them. If the 12 provincial elections this month are worth watching,
they're worth watching only to see just how much whoring a lazy press
can do.

And Iraqi media? Al Hayat reports
that TV stations in Iraq -- controlled by various political parties --
are pushing candidates but not informing their viewers of the
candidate's platforms and Iraqi TV correspondents complain that it is
difficult to get interviews with candidates, that when they do get
interviews and difficult to hold candidates accountable -- and that's if
you're state media and not technically controlled by a political
party.

The Kurdistan Region Presidency notes
that KRG President Masoud Barzani met with the US State Dept's Brett
McGurk this week to discuss tensions between Baghdad and Erbil:
"President Barzani stressed the importance of genuine partnership and
consensus-based decision-making in the Iraqi government and restated
Kurdistan Regions position toward the political process in the country.
He added that a good start would be for the Iraqi government to
undertake some concrete steps towards the resolution of the problems
facing the country." To empthasize the main point, Barzani Tweeted:

That would be a good step. Such a step would require trust and Nouri's
demonstrated that he is not to be trusted. Last week, the ongoing
protests in Iraq passed the 100-day remark. Mustafa Habib (Niqash) reports:

Complaints
have been being made for a while. But the demonstrations started
seriously in late December 2012, after the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri
al-Maliki, arrested members of the country’s finance minister, Rafia
al-Issawi’s body guards. Ten of them were accused of terrorism.
Al-Issawi is one of the country’s most senior Sunni Muslim officials
and he comes from Anbar, where his tribe is very influential.

This comes on top of other arrests and attempted arrests of top Sunni Muslim politicians.

And the Sunni Muslim protestors have been taking to the streets ever since.
Every Friday, they demonstrate and give the demonstration days similar
names to those used by neighbouring countries as they went through their
own revolutions during the so-called Arab spring.

For
example, among them, Fridays called: “no to a government of chaos”,
“go” (as in, leave now al-Maliki) and “hand in hand to maintain our
rights”.

In
response, al-Maliki has formed several committees to look into
protestors’ complaints. And the committees did issue a series of
potential actions.

Al-Maliki
has also continued to use a “carrot and stick” approach. His security
forces continue to arrest people involved with the campaigns and
imposing strict security regimes on Sunni Muslim-majority cities. This
behaviour is in fact provoking the demonstrators even more.

On
the other hand, the Prime Minister has also released some detainees,
promised to re-appoint Sunni Muslim army officers who lost their jobs
and cancelled several de-Baathification measures.

However
the protestors say they do not trust other measures will be
implemented, especially in regard to the government’s ongoing breach of
trust.

“Unfortunately
the protestors don’t trust al-Maliki because he is known for not
keeping the promises he made to his opponents during the political
process," said Ali Hatem Suleiman, a tribal leader and prime mover
behind the protests in the Anbar province, who also played a large part
in the US-founded initiative, the Awakening Movement, which was started to combat al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Yesterday in London, Iraqis protested
outside Parliament denouncing the tactics of Nouri's government. One
Iraqi woman carried a black sign with a large red "NO" and a large red
"X." Written on the sign in white -- in Arabic and in English were what
she was saying "no" to:

to corruption

to Sectarianism

to Arbitrary Arrests

to Torture

to the Murders of Iraqis

to the Enemies of Iraq

These demands have been made against Nouri's government since the
protests began. Another poster, carried by a man, featured Tony Blair
and billed him as "WORLD'S #2 TERRORIST & WAR CRIMINAL."

Two months ago, Iraqis also protested outside the British Parliament.
Signs carried at that demonstration had messages such as "END RAPES
AGAINST WOMEN IN IRAQI PRISONS," "END THE POLITICISATION OF IRAQ'S
JUDICIARY," "IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE POPULAR PROTEST MOVEMENT IN IRAQ
AGAINST INJUSTICE, TYRANNY & THE LOSS OF RIGHTS" and "RELEASE THE
INNOCENTS FROM MALIKI'S TORTURE PRISONS." The protesters chanted, "1,
2, 3, 4, Maliki no more, 5, 6, 7, 8, stop the terror, stop the rape."

As DPA observed Friday,
"Thousands of protesters have been holding protests for more than 100
days to demand that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki repeal laws they claim
target a section of the population." That is one aspect of it. The
least reported aspect of it has been what has scandalized so many
Iraqis, the rape and torture of women and girls and Iraqi prisons and
detention centers. A protester in London could and did put it on a sign
("END RAPES AGAINST WOMEN IN IRAQI PRSIONS") but the western press has
tried so hard to bury that part of the story. Few outlets have even
bothered to mention it and no western outlets has reported on it.
Reporting on it would require note the Parliamentary committees that
backed up the reports Nouri spent the month of November denying. It's
funny how news that's negative about Nouri never really makes the
Western press.

It's amazing how far the press will go to disguise the realities of life
for Iraqi women. Amazing? No, change that to appalling. That's what Rebecca was getting at last night in "when a woman is killed it's a 'personal matter'"
-- a crime is a crime . . . unless the victim is a woman and then the
crime becomes a 'personal matter' that must not be discussed. Which is
how you get crap like AFP's "The Iraqi government on Sunday unveiled sweeping reforms to a law
banning members of late President Saddam Hussein’s Baath party from
public life, following ongoing protests by the country’s Sunni minority."

You know, AFP has three men in Iraq -- no women. You think that
might have something to do with their failure to cover women? You think
that might have something to do with their silence on the issue of
rape?

Prashant Rao, can you please stop lying? Can you stop deceiving the public? Just once?

Let's apply the logic that reveals what a liar AFP is being.

You live in a country we'll call Justica. In Justica there's Law A
which prevents you from running for public office or holding senior
government positions. There's also Law B which allows the government to
arrest your family members for crimes you are suspected of.

In Justica, does Law A or Law B matter the most to you?

Since most people don't run for public office and since most people don't hold senior government positions? Law B.

And it's Article IV that has so outraged the protesters -- not the
Justice and Accountability which has outraged politicians and would be
politicians. Stop the lies.

I'm sick of the damn lies.

I'm sick of the sexism of AFP. I'm sick of Jane Arraf's desire
to try to blend in as a man. We're supposed to be grateful that in all
of her reports in the last four months -- for Al Jazeera, for the Christian Science Monitor, for PBS (NewsHour), for PRI -- in all those reports, in one she mentioned the issue of the rapes and how they fuel the protests.

We shouldn't be grateful. In November, I said Iraqis would be taking to
the streets. Not because I'm a psychic but because the rape scandal is
exactly what leads people to be outraged. A solid protests movement
(not a single day protest) needs an ethical basis.

But they won't tell you about it, these western reporters, or they'll be
Jane Arraf and offer it in sotto voice in one report and we're supposed
to be grateful. I'm not grateful for gender traitors who try to blend
with men.

Article IV allows the Iraqi government to arrest the children, spouses,
parents, siblings and other family members of a suspect. Arrest them
because they're suspected of crimes? No, arrest them even though
they're not suspected of anything. Article IV made legal what the US
military was already doing in Iraq: Terrorizing the public. They
couldn't get a hold of Mark Banner, they arrest his wife and hold her
(in some cases, torture her) and use her as a hostage to force her
husband's hand. It's kidnapping plain and simple and it was that when
the US military was doing it and it's kidnapping when Nouri's government
does it. This is how so many women and girls are in prison for
'terror' related offenses.

Al
Maliki, occupation appointed Prime Minister of Iraq, appeared on
Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013 on Arabia TV channel. The dialogue evolved around
the protests of millions of Iraqis which have lasted more than 40 days.
In this interview, Al Maliki emphasized that his government (occupation
assigned) will not meet the demonstrators demands. He kept eluding and
twisting facts about the humanitarian and justified demands the
protesters. Nothing is unexpected in what he said or claimed because we
all know in Iraq that he is an occupation puppet and would only serve
American and Iranian occupation interests in Iraq.

What was disturbing and caught my attention was Maliki’s comments on the
detention and torture of women in Iraqi prisons. He claimed that under
law, a woman can be detained if she covers up the crimes of her husband.
With this statement, Maliki claimed he had the answer to the angry
protests all over Iraq calling for the release of all innocent women.
Mothers, sisters, daughters and wives have been unjustly detained,
tortured or raped, simply because they do not know the whereabouts of
the men in their families. Thousands of women have been detained with no
legal accusations. Some of them are imprisoned with their infants and
children in unbearable prison conditions [1] just because Maliki claims that their husbands, brothers, or fathers have committed an act of terror.

Rape isn't a 'personal matter,' it's a crime. And when western outlets
look the other way, they're accomplices to rape. I have no patience for
this lying and this covering up. Iraqi women damn well deserve better
and how shameful that in all these months AFP has refused to
report on rape. Prashant Rao's immaturity is all over his Twitter
feed. It may even explain his inability to report on rape. However,
he's a paid journalist and immaturity doesn't excuse him or AFP.

Where's the western outlet that will tell the truth? 'We can't verify rape claims!' Then report them as claims.

You know what else you couldn't verify? Nouri's big releases of
prisoners. The provinces asked for a list of names of all these
supposed releases. Nouri's not given them one. They originally said it
would be late March. It's been kicked back to May currently. Without
such a list, how does anyone who has been released or how many? They
don't know. But the press was happy to run with Nouri's claims and
assertions as facts. It's a funny kind of one-sided world where despot
Nouri's claims are treated as gospel but claims from Iraqi women --
claims verified by Parliamentary committees -- are ignored.

Last month, Dahr Jamail (Al Jazeera) reported: Heba al-Shamary (name changed for security reasons) was released last
week from an Iraqi prison where she spent the last four years. “I was tortured and raped repeatedly by the Iraqi security forces,”
she told Al Jazeera. “I want to tell the world what I and other Iraqi
women in prison have had to go through these last years. It has been a
hell.”Heba was charged with terrorism, as so many Iraqis who are detained by the Iraqi security apparatus are charged. “I now want to explain to people what is occurring in the prisons
that [Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki and his gangs are running,” Heba
added. “I was raped over and over again, I was kicked and beaten and
insulted and spit upon.”Heba’s story, horrific as it is, unfortunately is but one example of what a recent report from Amnesty International refers to as “a grim cycle of human rights abuses” in Iraq today.

We spent several snapshots covering that Amenesty report [see this March 11th entry aptly titled "Iraqi women and girls (and the silence on this topic)" and snapshots for March 11th, March 12th, and March 13th].
I'm very familiar with it. So I'm aware that when Jane Arraf chose to
report on it, it was really strange that she focused on a male prisoner
saying they threatened to rape his wife in front of him -- as opposed to
a woman in the report who was threatened herself. Apparently, to
Arraf, women are property and the thought of a rape in front of their
'owner' (husband) is appalling but their being raped outside of their
'owner' isn't outrageous. That would explain this miserable she filed that refused to note actual rape noted in the Amnesty report. This is from the Amnesty International report entitled [PDF format warning] "Iraq: A Decade of Abuses."

More than three years before, members of the Human Rights Committee of parliament who
visited the earlier women’s prison that was then
located in al-Kadhemiya told reporters in
May 2009 that two women inmates they had seen
had testified that they were repeatedly
raped in detention after their arrest and before they were transferred to the prison. Sabah Hassan Hussein, 41, a journalist, was reportedly arrested on 29 February 2012 when
she went to the offices of the army’s Fifth Brigade in Baghdad’s Saydiya district to collect a
car belonging to one of her relatives that the authorities had confiscated. She was detained
and told that she was a suspect in a murder investigation. She was then transferred to the
Directorate of Major Crimes (Mudiriyat al-Jara’im al-Kubra) in Tikrit, where she was held
incommunicado, for about two months during which, she alleges, she was tortured. According
to a member of her family interviewed by Amnesty International, she alleges that her
interrogators burnt her with cigarettes, doused her with icy cold water and forced to undress
in front of male police officers. The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO) reported on 26
November that she had identified the police officers responsible for her alleged torture and
that their names had been submitted to the Ministry of Interior. Sabah Hassan Hussein was returned to Baghdad
from Tikrit in May 2012 and held at al-
Sayid For detention centre she was acquitted by the Resafa Criminal Court at the first session
of her trial on charges brought under the Anti-Terrorism Law on 23 January 2013. Another
defendant charged with her, however, was convicted and sentenced to death. Despite her
acquittal, Sabah Hassan Hussein remained in prison until 18 February 2013, when she was
released and allowed to return to her family. She subsequently told Amnesty International
that she filed a formal complaint with the authorities about her torture and other ill-treatment
in detention. They were previously alerted to her torture allegations in November 2012;
however, they are not known to have taken any
steps to bring those responsible to justice.

The plight of women detainees was the starting point for the mass
protests that have spread through many Iraqi provinces since 25 December
2012. Their treatment by the security forces has been a bleeding wound –
and one shrouded in secrecy, especially since 2003. Women have been
routinely detained as hostages – a tactic to force their male loved ones
to surrender to security forces, or confess to crimes ascribed to them.
Banners and placards carried by hundreds of thousands of protesters
portray images of women behind bars pleading for justice.

"We transferred all women prisoners to prisons in their home provinces."

Al-Shahristani's
statement is one in a long list of contradictory and misleading
statements by the regime's most senior officials – from al-Maliki
speaking of "not more than a handful of women terrorists", to his
contradictory promise that he will pardon all "women detainees who have
been arrested without a judicial order or in lieu of a crime committed
by some of their male relatives". That assurance was followed by
parading nine women, cloaked in black from head to toe, on the official
state TV channel, al-Iraqiya, as a gesture of the regime's "good will".Protesters
and Iraqi human rights organizations estimate that there are as many as
5,000 female detainees. The truth is leaking out, drip by drip. A few
weeks ago, 168 women detainees were released and there were promises of
another 32 waiting to be released. No one accused of torture, rape or
abuse has yet been brought to justice.

The first thing we do when an arrested woman is being transported to the
detention location, is that every part of her body is touched by all
the soldiers in the vehicle, while using dirty language. When we reach
the detention facility, we leave her in the investigation room,
supervised by the intelligence officer and his assistants. They directly
take all her clothes off, blindfold her, handcuff her, then the
intelligence officer starts to rape her with his assistant. And later
they ask her some questions: if she’s guilty or innocent and so on. Then
they blackmail her, saying that she should be cooperative and give
important information about the District where she lives, otherwise they
would distribute photos of her while she was naked and being raped.
They would accuse her of false charges if she would file a complaint
about harrassment and torture. If she receives a "guilty" verdict, she
usually stays in the same location for a period of one to three months,
in order to finish the procedures of her “case”, to be sent to the
headquarters. During these months, every single intelligence officer and
soldier in the Brigade will rape her. After that, she will be sent to
Al Tasfeerat Prison in Shaab Stadium, or to Al-Muthanna Airport Prison.
Sometimes the prisoner is transferred to the facility of the Chief
Commander's Office in the Green Zone, which is a cellar under the
building of the Baghdad Operations Headquarter, supervised by Major
General Adnan Al-Musawi. This place is one of the most dangerous,
dirtiest prisons of Al-Maliki.

I'm sorry that crimes against women make so many men working for
western outlets (and Jane Arraf) uncomfortable and they don't want to
cover these crimes. But they are crimes and they do take place and they
are news. I'm sorry that you're so damn miserable at your jobs that
the average news consumer could read you every damn day and never know
what Iraqi women face. It's bad enough that they have to face it. How
horrifying that when they actually put themselves through sharing these
brutal crimes, the western press doesn't care. No, ir doesn't care, it
just runs to avoid the topic. That's disgusting and they should all be
ashamed of themselves.

Crimes against women are not 'personal matters.' They are crimes. Anup Shah (Global Issues) has observed,
"Women's rights around the world is an important indicator to
understand global well-being." He is correct. But we should expand
that. How crimes against women are covered are an important indicator
of the health -- or lack of it -- of our press corps.

What does it say about the western press that, not being functioning adults, they can't report on crimes against women?

Caroline Jaine (Pakistan's Dawn) reported this week:Shatha Al-Abosi is a smart woman. Her small frame and traditional
dress do not mask her massive determination and passion for the
liberation of women. The winner of the 2007 Woman of Courage Award
claims to have survived five attempts on her life. Shatha is a women’s
rights advocate – and one of a number of impressive, resilient women we
met in Baghdad. Another woman all in black tells us she has lost a son
and other family members and is committed to lobbying for human rights.
Next to her, a lawyer with pink lipstick tells us of her commitment to
change. A third, fourth and fifth woman tell us more. The delegation I
am travelling with are visibly impressed and we all comment that the
women appear as articulate, educated and informed (if not more) than
many of their male counterparts.And yet, all evidence suggests that despite being the givers of life
in a country so familiar with death, despite being the source of comfort
and nurture – Iraqi women are not cherished and valued in society. Any
progress involving women in a future Iraq is undermined by the fact that
she is being beaten at home.

And Yanar Mohammed (Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq) observed last month: As for the women who were fortunate to be surrounded by some social
protection or source of income, they still only enjoy a second class
citizen status, under the valid laws of honor killing, wife battering,
unequal inheritance, and unequal testimony in court. Moreover, ten years
of occupation allowed and actually encouraged political Islam to poison
and brainwash the society through tens of television stations into a
state of fanatic misogyny, promoting a life-style where women are merely
servants, breeders, and home keepers with no mention of civil rights as
full citizen. On the contrary, new fear of femmephobia was introduced
into the society, where females will always be doubted as the source of
sin and indecency, like a beast in need of taming to be domesticated and
accept the life of slaves in prisons. Moreover, the same media outlets
program females to defend their newly found slavery as a source of pride
and a benefit which no other societies can offer.

For ten years, the U.S. Department of State has
been working closely with Iraqi counterparts and American academic and
nonprofit institutions to protect, preserve, and display the rich
cultural heritage of Iraq. Cultural heritage cooperation is a major
pillar of the Iraq-U.S. Strategic Framework Agreement, reflecting the
high value both nations place on this irreplaceable resource.A major continuing effort has focused on the Iraq Museum in Baghdad,
where looting in April 2003 left the facility physically damaged and an
unsafe environment for both staff and the Museum’s collections. In
summer 2003, State Department personnel were among the first responders
to the museum’s needs, providing replacement photographic equipment,
office furniture, and supplies. An assessment in autumn 2003 conducted
by experts in museum security, environmental control, conservation, and
information technology initiated a 2004 project of major improvements to
the museum’s physical plant, IT capabilities, and security.This assessment also laid the groundwork for the Iraq Cultural
Heritage Project, a $12.9 million initiative developed and funded by the
State Department, and implemented by the nonprofit International Relief
and Development from 2008 to 2011. This project rehabilitated and
furnished 11 of the museum’s public galleries, a 3-story collections
storage facility, and the conservation labs, as well as providing a new
roof and upgraded climate control systems.Along with physical improvements to the building, the State
Department sponsored and organized trainings for museum staff as part of
its comprehensive approach to partnering with Iraqis in the
preservation of their cultural heritage. In 2004, the Department funded a
special five-week “Cultural Heritage Institute” through the Council of
American Overseas Research Centers, to bring 22 Iraqi museum staff to
the Smithsonian Institution for training in museum management,
conservation, and curatorial practices. In 2009-2010, the Department’s
Iraq Cultural Heritage Project also provided training for 20 museum
professionals from throughout Iraq at the Field Museum of Natural
History in Chicago, covering topics from exhibit design and museum
education to archaeological site excavation and stabilization.Funding for these projects was provided through the Bureau of
Educational and Cultural Affairs’ Cultural Heritage Center and Office of
Academic Exchanges, the U.S. Embassy Baghdad, and private foundations.
Images and more information about other cultural heritage projects in
Iraq can be found here.Media contact: Susan Pittman, eca-press@state.gov, (202) 632-6373.

Other big news today includes All Iraq News reporting
Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi (above) has announced he will be
returning to the Kurdistan Regional Government. We covered that at
length this morning, refer to this entry for more on it. We also addressed the US funding Syrian 'rebels' which will now mean funding al Qaeda in Iraq -- for more on that topic, you can see this piece by Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com). I'm not a fan of Robert Parry's. In 2008, I lost all use for him. I don't visit his site. So the fact that I'm linking to this report (at his site) by William Boardman
should attest to the fact that I feel it's a very important report.
Tomorrow or Friday, we'll link to it again and I'll provide a link to
somewhere else for those who do not visit Consortium News. I'd
planned to address counter-insurgency today but that got put on hold due
to the e-mail from the community member asking for the crimes against
women and sexism to be covered. Boardman's written a very strong
article that deserves noting.

Refusing to
Pay for Cruise Missiles and Drone Strikes:30 Years of Tax Day Antiwar
Protests

On April 15 people in communities across the United States will
beleafleting, marching, doing street theatre, committing civil
disobedience,and picketing at post offices, IRS offices, federal buildings,
among otherpublic spaces, using materials calling attention to the harmful
effects ofmilitary spending. A list of U.S. Tax Day events with links to
internationalactions can be found at www.nwtrcc.org/taxday2013.php. April 15
is also thethird annual Global Day of Action on Military
Spending.

Thirty years ago, during his first term, President Ronald
Reagan set off amassive buildup in the U.S. armed forces that stands out on
historicalgraphs of U.S. military budgets since World War II. This motivated
thousandsof taxpayers to resume the civil disobedience (begun during the
Vietnam War)by refusing to pay taxes to buy those weapons, and led to the
1982 formationof the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
(NWTRCC). In thatsame year Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, risking
officialcensure, withheld half his income tax to protest nuclear weapons,
calling onothers to do the same.

The spike in military spending
since 2001 surpasses that of the Reaganyears. Today U.S. taxpayers are
buying even more expensive weapons systems,new nuclear weapons plants,
assassinations by unmanned drones, and soaringinterest payments on the
national debt along with burgeoning health carecosts for thousands of
wounded veterans.

On March 30, 1983, an ad placed in a Massachusetts
weekly began, “We refuseto pay taxes for the violence of war preparations
and other militaryexpenditures including present military involvement in
other countries. Overhalf of the federal income taxes are used for military
expenses.” Many ofthe 120 signers still refuse today and still protest on
tax day, joined bynewer activists who have been provoked into protesting
taxes for the wars inAfghanistan and Iraq as well as the endless war on
terror.

Massachusetts residents Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner were
signers of that1983 ad. Despite a house seizure and other collection efforts
by the IRS,Kehler and Corner say, “With the federal government running up
huge deficitsby spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on weapons and war,
at the expenseof its own people (especially its soldiers) and the people of
othercountries, we invite our fellow citizens to join us in saying 'No!' and
tobegin re-directing their federal tax money to local projects that
meetgenuine human needs.”

On the evening of April 15 in Berkeley,
California, members of NorthernCalifornia War Tax Resistance and the
People's Life Fund will be taking thisadvice and presenting grants of
resisted war taxes totaling over $20,000 tolocal social service, peace, and
justice organizations. That event andothers from Maine to Kentucky to
Washington are posted online with contactsat http://www.nwtrcc.org/taxday2013.php.

Contact NWTRCC to
talk with individual war tax resisters and refusers.

About Me

I'm a black working mother. I love to laugh and between work and raising kids, I need a good laugh. I'm also a community member of The Common Ills. Shout outs to any Common Ills community members stopping by. Big shout out to C.I. for all the help getting this started. I am not married to Thomas Friedman, credit me with better taste, please. This site is a parody.